Hosho McCreesh's Blog, page 24
May 2, 2016
Get Some!
BLOOD-RED Hardback spotted in the wild!
There's been a BLOOD-RED sighting out there in the wild! Have you seen a copy anywhere?
I have added a couple new items to the STORE. You may notice quantities are very limited. In the case of the new BoSP book, I should get more copies of both hardbacks and paperbacks, and of course Bottle of Smoke probably has copies too; as for All the Days, All the Things -- well, that's the last of them. It was my first book, way back in 1999. Someone wrote, looking for a copy, and I managed to dig up a couple -- so there's the last of them for anyone with a lonely shelf!
The Chinese Gucci rewrite continues, so I better quit farting around and get back to it!
April 28, 2016
End Results and Solid Beginnings...
Okay, so, on the off chance that someone out there is interested, I feel obligated to mention that there's a THIRST clamshell available from the Antiquarian Bookseller's Association of America...
But, man, that's a LOT of ham for two eggs. Terrific product shot though!
File Under: Propers
DECANT EDITORIAL
My relative silence these past couple weeks is due, in large part, to my work with Josh and Decant Editorial. If you don't know Joshua Mohr, you should -- he's a fine writer with a grip of truly interesting books out from Two Dollar Radio and Soft Skull Press. He's also a teacher. But above all else, he is a lover of words and writing. He and I are hard at work on a rewrite of Chinese Gucci, and even early on I already know the book is a tighter, leaner read for his insights.
A book has a tremendously lonely existence, especially early on. At first, only one person knows or cares at all. Eventually, maybe a couple more do as the book transforms from a silly vision inside one twisted noodle to, hopefully, a strange object with an appreciative readership. In between, just a handful of people see early drafts, or care too. Now decent editing ain't cheap, but If you're about to finish a manuscript, I suggest considering Josh as one of those handful who will care for it.
Last but not least, for anyone waiting: I will have signed copies of the new book, And Turns Still the Sun at Dusk Blood-Red in the STORE...eventually. Of course, BoSP has them available now
April 8, 2016
Happy Birthday, John Fante
A terrific excerpt from a terrific book.
April 5, 2016
Throw Back Thursday!
Throw Back Thursday! It's an actual thing! In order to participate, you simply post a picture of something from way back (it need not have originally been a Thursday, which clears up a lot for me...because, honestly, how could everyone remember that?!). So here we are, drink in the mind-bending design of my first book, a long-out-of-print (and for good reason) diddy called All the Days, All the Things...
Yep, that's the ACTUAL cover...(Gulp!)
File Under: Debating
As you all probably know, I'm a small press fan. I'm a fan of doing what you can to get your work out there, of trying to get it our by whatever means necessary. But I'd be lying if I said THIS ARTICLE doesn't make some decent points about the limitations of self-publishing. What do you think?
File Under: Reading
New Bill Taylor Jr. - To Break the Heart of the Sun
New Bill Taylor...need I say more? If you don't know his work, find some, get you some. In the Mecca of poetry cities San Francisco, he is, for my money, the best. And with a gorgeous cover and print job by Amanda Oaks at Words Dance, honestly, this is pure small press goodness!
Also: If you ever needed a reason to enjoy Bill Hader's work more, just check out these INSIGHTS INTO HIS READING LIFE. Proof positive that reading make you interesting!
File Under: Mad Props
Pig Ear Press
Last but not least: My short story, "Puerto Penasco" is set to get the Pig Ear treatment sometime in the next half-year or so. That, to me, is great news. Pig Ear puts pure heart and soul into their fine, fine productions, and I feel lucky to eventually be part of the stable. More specifics when I have them, but for an idea of what to expect, check out this downright cracker of a book: Joe Ridgwell's "Cuba."
Ridgwell's Cuba from Pig Ear Press
March 28, 2016
The Unsubtle Forces Aligned Against the Small Press
So, it's small press month (there's a small press month, you say?), and with any luck you've seen a slight uptick in small press related cyber-ink over the month of March. This, then, is my humble offering...a little take on what I see as the three main problems facing small presses. Of course, I'm just one crank blathering here...and I'd love to hear what you think about what the small press can do to expand its audience.
File Under: Bully-pulpit
The Unsubtle Forces Aligned Against the Small Press
Every March there's the smallest little bump in interest, the subtlest increase in chatter, and the small press lands on a few more radars than normal courtesy of Small Press Month. And, so we're clear, I'm jazzed about that...even if it is basically a token gesture towards an every-growing-though-still-ignored corner of publishing. Too pessimistic? Maybe. But "Small press month" is as good a time to reflect as any. So where is small press publishing at now?
Hard to say. When it comes to those spots I'm most familiar with, I say the easy answer is: everywhere and no where. Because unless you know the presses to go looking for, the mostly undiscovered writers to seek out, and unless you take the time to find, buy their books, and post ratings and reviews -- then the sad truth is most small press books don't exist. I mean, the books get made, sure, are usually bought by folks who already know about them (& thank the stars they are!), they're hopefully read...then stuck on a shelf. But among book-buying masses in general never comes in contact with the small press in any way.
How can that be?
Well, to me, it seems to be by design. And for a country and a world that very clearly adores the trope of the scrappy underdog, fighting a cold, uncaring system, it seems the world is terribly late to small press publishing's plight (and by "late," I mean "largely unaware of it!").
Many publishers make and sell their books through their own website, announcing titles to their mailing lists, and sinking or swimming based on those initial sales. That's a workable model, easy enough to maintain, but -- of course, severely limited by the number of actual buyers on said list. Of those small presses with slightly wider sales network, many get a tiny corner on Amazon, but only because Amazon owns their print-on-demand company (and is happy to take a wet chunk of the printing dollars as well as from sales, just for allowing small presses the privilege). Those small press books are left to the whims of algorithms that are designed to sell more of what's already selling, and promote only what's already being talked about. So, unless there are daily sales, weekly spikes, lots of social media likes and shares, that small press book you love basically doesn't exist in the larger apparatus of book selling or book buying.
Listen, I'm not so foolish as to assume that the larger press or its readers give a damn about the small press. They might not. But they also might. And there are some pretty damn significant mechanisms in place that keep the deck is systematically stacked against the small press, preventing great small press books from finding some equal footing on which to compete for book dollars.
From the top down, the small press is restricted access to the larger machine of publishing.
In fact, the only place you'll probably hear about a small press book is from the authors and publishers themselves...something that, culturally, has now become akin to the pushy door-to-door vacuum salesman of yesteryear jamming his dirty loafer in your front door. The mechanisms I see, the ones causing the obvious bottlenecks, are:
1) ISBNs
2) Production lead times (and the cash on hand necessary to survive them) and
3) Distribution. And, probably a 100 more problems I don't see.
First, ISBNs. If you've ever looked into them, you know they ain't cheap. And the sale of them has been engineered to keep out small presses (I think). I'm willing to listen to alternate theories that explain why a single ISBN costs $125, 10 cost $295, while 100 can be had for $575. How many small presses do you know have $575 set aside...just for the right to have their book's info and metadata legitimized by the '70s era ISBN book selling apparatus? To keep out the riff-raff, as far as I can tell. Unless you have six bills, or $30 for every format of every title, you aren't a "real" book in the eyes of the bookselling machine that powers almost all retail. And worse, you aren't a "real" book in the eyes of most buyers, bookstores, and even some libraries. You gotta pay to play, apparently.
Secondly, lead times for production. In order to launch (at least traditionally) a book with a distributor, and with proper time for blurbs and to line up press coverage, conventional wisdom says you need at least 18 months. You send out advance reader copies to folks, or to get a book in the queue for reviews at the kind of places people read to find new books. Again, what small press do you know that has the money to put hundreds of dollars into ARCs, and paper, and cover stock, and printing...to then sit waiting patiently for a year or more, earning none of that money back, in hopes of someone somewhere actually reading the damn thing and saying something nice about it? Does it have to be that way? Hell, I don't know. Maybe it does. It seems to work for the big guys (and some really smart small ones like Two Dollar Radio). But I can't help but wonder, with business moving at such pace these days...at least when it wants to...if there couldn't be another way. I don't see too many people clamoring to change it, and until they do, nothing will change. Once again, it's not big publishing that feels the squeeze here (it's their system -- they designed it to work like this!). The small presses, that have dumped every free dollar (and then some) into the new box of books fresh off the UPS truck, and need to recoup those costs if they're to put out their next book...those are the ones left out in the cold by a year+ launch schedule.
Lastly, distribution. This is the one that, much to my chagrin, seems like it could be most easily solved by the democratic checks-and-balances of a robust Internet. I feel like someone somewhere could invent a website that connects small presses, maybe on an opt-in basis, to the interested bookstores and libraries nationwide, based on realistic expectations of the limited sales potential of small runs, of and taking just a humble little sliver of the action in return. I have to believe there is someone out there with the technical know-how and the egalitarian, revolutionary spirit to do this. Because there are great presses out their, making books that should be on shelves, waiting for an unsuspecting read to stumble on to. That one cool bookstore near your hometown university, that edgy coffee shop, hip restaurant, local brewery, or even small library -- I have to believe there are enough folks out there with the guts to gamble on small press stuff. It should be easy for them to get their hands on some small press stuff. Easier than it currently is, anyway. That's my $.02.
I'm a small press guy, have been since my first acceptance letter way back in 1999. I get that this matters to me and that others might not be moved. But if you are moved, if you've read this far, then maybe, just maybe, you have an idea, some scheme that could push small press books further.
Think about it.
Try it.
Do it.
See what happens. I can imagine no better way to celebrate Small Press Month than by doing just that. I mean, what do we have to lose?
March 20, 2016
The BLOOD-RED Book Trailer
For your consideration...
Order HERE.
March 11, 2016
Collage
While awaiting the arrival of BLOOD-RED, I made a page for my most recent hobby (see below).
File Under: Making
COLLAGE - Perhaps it's a result of nervous energy, or maybe it's just been a long time coming, and I finally sat down to goof with it. Whatever the case, I'm digging the results! And big props to X-Ray Book Co. for the inspiration...their Kut-Uup project was very cool! I post these on Instagram if you want to see them there, but for those without an account, you can have a look-see HERE!
February 25, 2016
Something BLOOD-RED This Way Cometh!
BLOOD-RED is right around the corner. If you want a hardback, consider this fair warning: 9 remain. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Also, one week remains in the Goodreads giveaway! Have you signed up for your chance to win?
File Under: Impossible?
Paying writers? I mean, could it ever work?
File Under: Propers
Yes! More like this, please! Gallery Beggar (with singles, not unlike the mendicant booksworks design) has a fan who'll put his money where his mouth is!
February 19, 2016
And Turns Still the Sun at Dusk Blood-Red - AVAILABLE NOW
As those on my notify list already know, And Turns Still the Sun at Dusk Blood-Red poems from Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon by Christopher Cunningham and Hosho McCreesh, is available for order, and ships early March from Bottle of Smoke Press.
It's a companion piece to the two nobody-poets' groundbreaking book of letters, Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon.
From the FOREWORD:
In May, 2009, Orange Alert Press released Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon: The Cunningham/McCreesh Letters Vol.1. As part of that release, 26 stunning lettered hardbacks were made by the incomparable Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press. It's something most book collectors in general have seen—a limited edition hardback, often more expensive—to accompany the trade paperback. But we wanted to make something extra special for all those early supporters. Then it dawned on us: what's better than owning a broadside, or some other uber-exclusive production? A manuscript…an actual typewritten original.
Now this was an idea!
So we got to typing: a double-sided manuscript broadside, featuring an original, unpublished poem from each author. But not just any ol’ new poem—no sir!—one written specifically for the project…with a title pulled straight from the original letters themselves. Yes, a new poem, by each author, off of their respective typers, signed and everything.
Collected here for the first time ever, are the final spoils: those 52 poems from the lettered copy hardbacks—bringing the entire opus full circle. Rarely in life does something as truly terrific as SUNLIGHT and now BLOOD-RED ever happen. From the original wild-typed letters traded between two strangers in 2002, to 13 years later, seeing how a few of those banged out lines dashed off in the sinking midnights have morphed into this. It celebrates everything that is wondrous about the small press—personal, approachable writing by unknown writers, most working day jobs and hoping to make the occasional buck while chasing their humble dreams. The fact that Bottle of Smoke manages to then wrap it all up in gorgeous, collectible artisan productions is further evidence of the vast, undiscovered culture of makers, doers, and creators—the life-blood of the small, artisan, independent press—putting out work that is far more adventurous than any large press (with their bean-counters making decisions based not on art but on the bottom line) can gamble on. We offer this up with our deepest and most sincere gratitude—to all who've supported us, and all who've made us look so damned good.
Paperback Edition: $15
Signed Hardcover Edition: $35
Anyone interested can order now from:
Bill Roberts
P.O. Box 66
Wallkill, NY 12589
orders@bospress.net
bill@bospress.net
View More Info at:
http://bospress.net/order.html
http://www.hoshomccreesh.com/blood-red
February 13, 2016
Still THIRSTY After All These Years...
Way back in 2013, when THIRST first came out, some of you might remember all the DrunkSkull stickers and sundry that made its way around the world. Well, just this yesterday, another sticker landed in another faraway locale -- and here's the photographic evidence (with many thanks to Jocelyn!!)
File Under: Reading
If you've ever wondered why all the best TV ain't on network TV...well, it's the same reason all the exciting beer comes from microbreweries, and all the dangerous books come from the small press! CONNECT THE DOTS HERE.
File Under: Getting
William Taylor, Jr's To Break the Heart of the Sun -- the man hasn't written a bad book yet!
File Under: Watching
Hail, Caesar! - The breezy Coen Bros. romp hides the subtle soul-searching at the core.
